Sunday, February 24, 2013

Poutine week MTL

I've never been much of a poutine
person. This is why Poutine Week in
Montreal was so good to me: so many different types of poutine, so
little fries-brown-sauce-squishy-cheese trios :) It was, like, calling
out my name! Out of 30 poutine places, about 27 were offering
non-traditional poutine. That made me happy. VERY happy!

We
'teamed up' with one of my school friends and her bf and set out to our
first choice (out of 30) of poutine places on Monday. We chose La
Mauvaise Réputation. Who knew we would end up going to 2 other restos
that night and to... 7, yes, SEVEN others that week (for a total of
8...EIGHT!!!).

Every resto chose one poutine (or two) and it was either
supposedly 5$ or 10$ (sometimes 13$ or 15$ $%/?&*). Every restaurant would give you a 'Poutine Week' card with a code on it and you could go vote for them on the Poutine Week website. This gave you points and then you could cash in your points. We actually both chose a 30$ gift certificate at Bota Bota. Not too shabby!

Here we go!

Mauvaise Réputation

Place:
New restaurant, very cute . LOVED how when you get in, there's somewhat
of an indoor abri Tempo and you don't feel the cold at ALL when you're
seated. Nice. Very nice. There's a big window right at the front of this
long resto and around it is a brick wall. Who doesn't love a nice brick
wall I ask? I think our favorite thing that day, in that resto, was
that right beside us, there was a shiz load of heating. May I remind you
that it was -40 ish outside. Brrrrr. The music was nice and neutral and
lounge-y.

Service:
The waiter was very nice and friendly and we got our [paper] menus
quickly--perhaps because we were actually the first ones in the resto. I
think it was about 6:30. Throughout our meal, the waiter also came back
to re-serve the water, which was nice. The menu itself was nothing to
write home about --hamburgers, noodle soup... We were obviously only
interested in poutine.

Poutine:
Pulled pork poutine. Pulled pork, caramelized onions, coleslaw, smokey chips. We decided to share 2 poutines and to add a couple
sides which are not really even worth mentionning here. Poutine got to
our table and we were immediately happy. It was in a square bowl and it
was vertically inclined instead of flat which made my eyes happy. Eat
with your eyes first, right? The main part of the poutine was the pulled
pork. I loves me some pulled pork! And the sauce the pork was marinated
in had a wonderful mix of spices. The coleslaw was actually a nice
addition to the poutine as it was refreshing and it went well with the
rest of the ingredients. Oh, and the smokey chips were great and a good
fit too but obvisouly not homemade. The caramelized onions, on the other
hand, were not so present. I believe there was only one... maybe two in
the entire poutine. Also, the sauce was a bit too liquidy and
agglomerated at the bottom. All in all, a very good start to what was to
be an epic (that's right, epic!) poutine run throughout the week. And
that pulled pork was a winner!

Score for food: an average of 7.5 service: an average of 8

La Bêtise

Place:
If you didn't have the address to this restaurant, you would definitely miss it. Most definitely! When you come in, it looks a tad fancy but then you see the tv.
pfff.... damn tvs! Open kitchen, wooden everything including the menus
(except for the tables, which were plastic... seemed like they ran out
of money...), and lots of people! There were also huge drapes coming in
to 'take care of the cold' but that didn't work out as well as they had
planned.

Service: Nothing special. Got water and that's it. They were really busy.

Poutine:
General Tao poutine. Cheese curds, battered chicken, original General Tao sauce. This was supposed to be my favorite poutine. I
mean come on! General Tao? I LIVE for good General Tao! But man was that
one ever disapointing. The fries were obviously bought and not
homemade, the chicken was meh and the sauce KIND of ressembled the sweet
General Tao sauce but it wasn't close enough. Also, it was 13$ instead
of the 10$ we thought it was going to be. Another thing... it was
lukewarm. Uncool.

Score for food: an average of 6 service: an average of 7

Poutineville Beaubien

Place:
This place was full of people and so we had to wait... but only for a
couple minutes! The decor is nothing special: frames and IKEA lamps,
stucko (nice ;p) and pop corn ceiling, with tight seating room. It's the
type of place you go to with friends to enjoy a nice... poutine! Duh!
You can also 'make your own poutine', so that's pretty cool. We were
seated next to a vacuum cleaner. Fun.

Service:
Took a while for the waitress to get to our table and longer to get
water. She was nice nonetheless and gave us a great suggestion concerning
which potatoes to have our poutine with. We took l'écrasé de patate
(specialty of the house. Other choices include sweet potato, julienne,
or 'coupe maison'): clumps or agglomeration of potatoes, which turned
out to be quite good. Quite freaking good. It did take a while for the
poutine to arrive to our already full stomachs...But our waitress was
nice and smiley and that is gosh darn important.

Poutine:
Le Montréalais. Swiss cheese, mushrooms, smoked meat and breaded pickle on potato
écrasé poutine. I'm already not a fan of poutine, but I think I'm even
less a fan of smoked meat. The only time I went to Shwartz, I ended up
eating a pickle. This poutine, I believe, changed my mind. First of all,
that pickle (which we had to share four ways) was damn good. And thank
you, waitress, those potatoes were damn good as well. Well seasoned but
most importantly, well clumped :p The mix of flavors was DE-licious and
it was so good that it turned out to be my two friends' best poutine of
the night. The mushrooms were a nice addition to this lovely surprise.
The smoked meat wasn't half as bad as I thought it was going to be. As I
mentioned, it may have changed my mind about smoked meat. It was very
nice in this poutine. Very fitting. Not as salty as I thought it was
going to be. It was missing something for me though. Missing an OUMPH.

Score for food: average of a bit over 7 service: 8

Lucky's truck

THIS
is the one we were supposed to go to on that first day but it was
closed. It was the one that was most appealing to us anyway.

Place:
Not much to say; it's a bar that looks like a bar. Lucky's truck is
usually, well, a truck but in the winter, the food is served in the bar L'Abreuvoir on Ontario corner of St-Denis.

Service:
Thing that sucked was that A: we needed to have a drink since we were
in a a bar and that B: it wasn't clear who was serving what (food,
drink?). The 'drink girl' came by quite quickly but the girl that was
serving the food was nowhere to be found... for a while. Oh and we had
to pay two different bills and since it's a bar, we had to pay cash.
Pfff.

Poutine:
La fameuse. Duck confit, caramelized onions, foie gras sauce and red
wine. As I mentioned before, this was supposed to be THE poutine. I
mean, come on... it had duck in it! Duck! But alas... it was cold, the
sauce wasn't as present as we wanted it to be and the duck was dry. One
of the only good things was that the fries were good, at least!
Basically it sounded way better on paper than in my mouth. And the
caramelized onions? Where were they? Well they weren't on my plate. Nice presentation but maybe not the best vehicule for a poutine?

Score for food: average of 5.5 service: 5

Méchant Boeuf

Place:
This was in Old Montreal so I think that automatically means it will be
fancier. And I obviously did not think about that before I decided to
wear a somewhat ripped hoodie that evening (what? I needed room to 'grow'
after 3 poutines!). The place itself was very big and had huge windows.
Its actually a part of the Place d'Armes Hotel and a member of the
Antonopoulos 'take-over' of Old MTL. Seriously, they have a bunch of
hotels and restaurants, most of which were taking part in Poutine Week
and all of which were in the Happening Gourmand. The lights were dimmed,
a band was playing CCR tunes, I was home :)

Service:
The waiter was very nice, professional, and came to our table quickly. A
bit TOO quickly: there were two poutines and I couldn't choose which
one! He came back and took our order a couple minutes later.

Poutine:
Fricadelle, oka, cheddar, confit pork flank and tempura onion rings.
All of this on baby potatoes cut in half. This was our 5th poutine of
the week and after eating it, ze wife claimed it was her favorite one
(or so she thought ;p) I must also mention that there were 2 different
kinds of poutine, none of which were actually on the Poutine Week
website. The onions were crunchy (as they should be) and delicious and
the cheddar was damn good in there. One thing that didn't fit was
somewhat of a big fat meatball right in the middle of the poutine. Why?
Why was there a big fat DRY meatball there? To remind us that we were
eating at Le Méchant BOEUF? That part, we could have done without. This
poutine was huge, even if we were sharing it. The mix of flavours (uh...
not counting the meatball), was great, the pepper sauce was well done
and there was just enough. Asking ze wife, it was her fave, considering
the other 4 we'd eaten.

Score for food: average of 7.5 service:8

Bevo

Place:
This is a huge restaurant, on 2 floors. Basically, a pizza place. The
first floor was pretty much full, on a wednesday night, in Old MTL,
which I'll always find weird... I mean, who decides to go to Old MTL on a
freezing night? No? Anyhoot, we got seated at the pizza bar,
which

was nice. We were near the fire and the bored pizza guy :p

Service:
The waitresses wore white and red and were very smiley, which is always
appreciated! Our waitress came quickly and gave us glasses of water and
took our order. Wasn't that hard... 1 poutine for the two of us! The
one thing that was less appreciated was the fact that the waitresses
were talking (about their personnal stuff) between themselves in a corner, in plain sight. Gosh, I
hate that. Oh and the big boss was lurking the whole night which started
to make us feel uncomfortable!

Poutine:
Italian sausage poutine. Italian sausage, mild cheddar, onion confit,
peppers and fresh herbs. The sauce was good with just enough salt but if
you didn't have either a piece of onion or pepper in your bite, it
didn't have that much taste. There wasn't that much cheese though. A
good mix but not enough taste, I found. And ze wife didn't think very
highly of the fries.Good thing was the sausage. THAT was goo-hoood. I
just wished there would have been more than half of one!

Score for food: average of 7 service:8

Miss Prêt à Manger

*We
ended up there after having gone to Café Pavé (where we were ready to
eat an 'apparently amazing' veggie poutine) and noticing that it was
closed because of water dammage. Thanks for putting it on the website,
a**h****! May I just mention that it was EXTREMELY COLD and we froze our butts off just getting there!*

Place:
This place was tiny, with about 20 seats all together. Most tables were
high ... only a couple were 'normal height'. They make lots of good
things like yummy salads and sandwiches. That's why they are a caterer,
first and foremost.

Service:
There were two waitresses, I believe and they were everywhere at once!
It was even hard to get a price off of them... like the price of a glass
of wine (which turned out to be 10$ for a glass... tad expensive!).
Needless to say it was very busy during the lunch hour. The boss/owner
was running around, swearing because the heating wouldn't work. Funny
but unprofessional.

Place:
The place itself is quite hip looking, with lots of sun coming through
the large windows. We had one of the best spot, but maybe that's becaue
it was about 1:15 when we got there.

Service:
Our waiter, who seemed to be more of a manager or even owner, was very
nice and friendly. He was very interested by the fact that this was our
eighth poutine of the week! And, he came to check up on us and the
poutine.

Poutine:
Breakfast poutine. Homefries, sqeaky curd cheese, caramelized peppers
and onions, hollandaise sauce, poached egg. Yum yum yum! The potatoes were
crunchy, the peppers were well done and the presentation was just
lovely! At first, i gotta say I was scared of the egg on top but it was
just deeeelicious! On top of it, the plate AND the poutine were hot. You
know how much I like hot plates by now! Everything was well seasoned
and we were so happy that we went for that 8th poutine after all!

That's it for us and poutine week. After rating the poutines on the poutine week website, we ended up ranking 15th out of 4356 something poutine eaters. Ain't that bad huh? I guess I AM a poutine person now!